Ange smiled triumphantly, and we waded back to the shoreline and continued our search. After ten minutes, the dying light made it too difficult to see, so we both powered on waterproof flashlights.
Just a short distance into my new trajectory, I spotted something unusual on the bottom. It was a deep pool by the looks of it, and it was located ten yards to the west, nestled between thick encroaching branches on both sides. As I splashed closer and shined the beam of my flashlight, my eyes widened as I realized what it was. It looked like the entrance into a narrow cave.
My heart rate picked up as I cut the rest of the distance. It was roughly six feet deep to the bottom, then the opening cut inland through the limestone. Shining the light down, I sucked in a breath, then submerged. The opening was small, just big enough for me to fit through. I carefully pulled my way inside. The view was covered by tangles of roots, and I couldn’t even see the end of it.
Curious, I pulled myself farther and farther into the cave, then noticed it cut skyward up ahead, ending in the middle of the thick groves. Somewhat dejected, I managed to turn around and make my way back out without getting caught on anything.
I swam out from the opening, then broke through the surface and caught my breath.
“You all good, bro?” Jack called out from over on the skiff.
I gave him a thumbs-up, then climbed up onto the shallows and continued with my search, scanning the detector from side to side.
“I stumbled into a cool cave back there,” I said. “But it just dead-ends in the groves, and I didn’t get any hits inside.”
“You found a cave here?” Jack said. He stood and slid off his T-shirt. “I’ve gotta check this out.”
He grabbed his mask and was just about to leap overboard when a high-pitched beep froze him in his tracks. Both of us snapped our heads toward the sound. Ange stood in the knee-deep water just down the shoreline. She had her detector in the water, and she was frozen in place. Slowly, she slid the coil back a foot.
The beep blared again. She looked up at us with wide eyes and the biggest smile plastered across her face.
“Please don’t tell me you dropped a ring or something?” Jack said.
Ange chuckled.
“I do believe we’ve got ourselves a hit, boys.”
Rejuvenated by the simple electronic sound, I sprang to the skiff and grabbed the metal mesh scoop. Jack snatched a portable shovel and we both slogged over to Ange, who was kneeling down and digging through the sand and muck. Feeling the excitement, I patted Ange on the back, then Jack and I went to work, digging away as best we could. The top layer came easy, but once we hit just a few inches down, the going slowed. Every time we pulled out a pile, sand and silt tumbled back into the hole, countering our progress.
“How deep, Ange?” I asked, taking a break from the seemingly futile effort.
She hovered the metal detector over the spot again, and again the speaker beeped.
“Three feet,” she said, reading the small LCD screen.
Jack stopped digging, then brushed aside his curly hair from his face and sighed.
“Three feet?” he said. “We’ve barely made it six inches and this ground’s getting harder and harder. We’ll be at this all night at this rate.”
I looked over my left shoulder. The sun was gone, completely swallowed up by the horizon and leaving the landscape shrouded in darkness. We were tired and hungry, and the skeeters were really starting to make their presence known.
“How about we come back in the morning, Ange?” I said.
She was curious about what we’d found, we all were, but she relented.
“Fine,” she said. “But we come back bright and early, understood?”
Jack and I both grinned and agreed. We sloshed back to the skiff, loaded up our stuff, then untied the line. I memorized the spot where we’d dug, then scanned over the lagoon. It was a peaceful and serene place. We could’ve been in the middle of the Amazon, it was so quiet.
As I climbed onto the boat, my phone vibrated to life in my backpack. I grabbed it and checked the screen. It was Pete.
“What are you crazy kids up to?” he said after I picked up. “It’s after ten. Grub’s getting cold.”
“Ange got a hit,” I said. I paused, letting the revelation simmer.
Pete laughed. “Of course she did. You guys didn’t dig it up without me, did you?”
“We saved it for tomorrow,” I said. “And we’re gonna need bigger shovels. Whatever it is, it’s deep. Real deep.”
THIRTY-TWO
Deacon Lynch sat in the passenger seat of the old diesel Ford F-350 pickup truck. At just past midnight, the driver pulled into a sleepy parking lot, then chugged around to the back side of a white building with big glass windows up front and garage doors in the back.
Peering through the windshield, Lynch read a neon sign that said “South Florida Motorsports.”
“Pull up to the door on the left,” Lynch ordered.
Titus nodded, put the truck in reverse, and did as he was told. Once the truck was idling, Lynch pointed through the glass toward a chain-link fence enclosing an area filled with boats and trailers.
“You know what to do, Titus,” Lynch said.
The young man nodded. They’d gone over the plan again and again.
Lynch creaked the passenger-side door open, then hopped out. He strode to the tailgate and took a look around. The place was quiet and empty. Even on the main drag on the other side of
